Over the past 48 hours, the number of spam account registration attempts has really spiked. Spooky and I have dealt with over 100 since this morning. There is not much of a pattern -- no common country of origin, domain, etc. Last time this happened, we added having to answer a question when you wanted an account. At the time, we leaned to making the questions simple like "what is 3+5?", "this board is about ___ Costello." I have changed the questions today and left them simple. It didn't slow them down.

Now I am asking for reasonable to answer but more difficult questions to slow the spam account registrations. You would answer one correctly when you get an account and not when you post.

migdd wrote:Doc, it looks as though some spam has landed on the General Discussion board. See the thread entitled "some new reverse phone hookup".

For a slightly more difficult question to sign onto the board how about "EC's real name is ____ MacManus."

Anything you can answer with a search engine is apparently bad. It will get cracked and fed into a database

I changed the question to inverse the case in "AbCdEf" and that slowed it down for about 12 hours. Now the question is "Ask the admin for the answer to this question" That has slowed things down to a reasonable level.

The logs show we have had 950 attempts to get an account today and only one person has emailed.

FYI I deleted that spam post and the user. I will delete the topic shortly. Thanks.

Boy With A Problem wrote:Would a picture work? Name the LP for example?

That's a good idea but (1) we only get either the captcha or (2) Q&A in text. I fear that something like Google Shopper could identify the LP. Check out http://www.google.com/mobile/shopper/. The mobile version can identify books or media by the cover. I have used it in thrift stores to see if something was worth purchasing. Unfortunately, that means identifying an LP cover is computer solvable.

It is 6:05pm here and there have already been 796 automated registration attempts but no one has read it and looked at the top of the screen for the advice on how to get an admin.